Winning a Northwoods League Championship requires great players. But to win that championship on the field, you first have to have great “players” off the field. For the Royal Oak Leprechauns, that’s Leprechaun Player Personnel Director, Coach Bob Riker. With more than four decades of experience coaching, Coach Riker has seen his players succeed and win both on and off the field. His day job for the past 34 years has been coaching at Brother Rice High School and serving as Head Coach for the last 25 years.

The Brother Rice alum was himself a three-sport athlete and played college baseball for Central Michigan University, then drafted by the Detroit Tigers, he played in their minor league system before he decided to pursue a coaching career at his alma mater.

That decision was key in helping the Warriors win a state championship in 1992 with Riker as an assistant. He remained as an assistant until 1998 when he moved down the bench to Head Coach. Since then, he’s racked up nine Catholic League Championships, 15 District Championships, eight Regional Championships, three State Finals and one State Championship. When one of his former players, MLB great DJ LeMahieu and President of the Royal Oak Leprechauns and Leprechaun General Manager Mark Sackett asked the MHSAA Hall of Famer to bring his acumen in choosing players, it was a no-brainer. He already had 89 players move up to the collegiate level at four-year institutions with nine who made it to the professional level and three currently on MLB rosters.

“I know a lot of people and have created a lot of good relationships with people and coaches. So, it made it, I don’t want to say easy but it made it easier to call coaches and say, ‘Hey, I need a pitcher, I need a catcher, I need this, I need that. What do you got going?’” Coach Riker said. “(Leprechaun Head) Coach (Chris) Faust and I have kind of put together a really good group of players. They love to play, which is a big thing. And having the schedule that we have, you’ve got to really love to play if you’re playing 72 games in 76 days.”

With the bulk of the roster coming from in state, Coach Riker still uses his out of Michigan connections to fill each roster spot with a top-notch quality player.

“We want to grab as many talented players as we possibly can. To me, pitching is where the game starts and ends. Obviously, you need position players that can catch the ball. There’s three basic entities. You’ve got to be able to throw strikes and you’ve got to be able to pitch. And you’ve got to be able to play defense and catch the ball. And you’ve got to be able to score runs. If you can do two of those three better than the other team, you’re going to win 75 percent of your games. If you walk fewer guys, if you strike out fewer times and you make fewer errors, you’re going to be looking pretty good and being very competitive game in and game out.”

Winning that Northwoods League Championship begins off the field with great “players” like Coach Bob Riker for the Royal Oak Leprechauns.

By Mark H. Stowers